Archive for fertility

Yes. I want to have a baby, to have a child. I want to be pregnant, put all my attention and care into my health and diet and connecting with a new life. I want to invite a soul in and watch it grow. I want to feel and watch my body change. I want to give birth exultantly, however that happens, whether painfully or pain-free, whether a short labour or long. I want to catch a baby with my own hands and look into its eyes soon after it is borne, to nurse it when it is ready and to birth a placenta still attached.I want to nurse and carry and snuggle that baby, to sleep beside it at night and hold it in my arms during the day, to keep it clean and dry and warm and comfortable and respect its needs and timetable.I want to do all of these things. And I will.

In which I answer the many questions posed on search engines that lead folks here. ‘Cause hey, it’s better than no post at all. Perhaps we’ll make this a regular feature? Because after all, I need to be even further up in the search engine results for “ejaculation” than I already am.

“can you get pregnant from post-ejaculation”

Yes, technically you can. Post-ejaculate can contain sperm, and as everyone keeps on saying, it only takes one. This is technically true, but realistically the reason there are so many sperm involved in an ejaculation is that it takes a lot more than one in most situations. Sperm are fragile little critters, and ova don’t succumb to the first sperm to show up in their neighbourhood in most situations – it takes the combined efforts of many sperm to produce enzymes to break down the proteins around the ovum so that conception can take place. And of course, no amount of ejaculate, including pre- or post- will get a woman pregnant if she isn’t in or near the fertile time in her cycle, which doesn’t help if she doesn’t know when that is, or if her cycle is irregular or unpredictable.

Still, I can only assume from the question that pregnancy is an unwanted consequence, in which case, it’s better to be ridiculously careful than cavalier.

“i’m 8 week pregnent can i have sex with my patner”

If you do not have a history of early miscarriage (more than a couple) then there’s no reason why you can’t have sex with your partner. Enjoy!

But for any partner-folk who show up here to get ammunition in their strange “battle” to have sex with partners who don’t want to have sex and are claiming pregnancy as an excuse, just because you can have sex doesn’t mean that you have to. Let’s be absolutely clear that absolutely everybody can refuse to have sex at absolutely any time for absolutely any reason, and nobody has any obligation to have sex or continue sex, ever. If either partner is feeling squoogy on the topic of sex during pregnancy for any reason, that’s okay. We’re all complicated folks with complicated internal worlds, and pregnancy is an odd time – full of upheaval and change. Sex can become less of a priority or more of a priority for both or either or any partner during that time and kindness and communication should always be a primary response. Coercion is a poor sexual response.

“can a woman get pregnant after her cycle”

What does “after her cycle” mean? Women can get pregnant if they have intercourse during or slightly before the fertile time in their cycle. This fertile time varies from woman to woman, and even from cycle to cycle for, so more information is needed to evaluate this question.

“can you get pregnant if his ejaculation is inserted in you with your fingers”

Yes. In fact, I’d say that this is a better chance than the scenario above with post-ejaculate. Look folks, if you don’t want a pregnancy to happen, the best bet is to keep male ejaculate away from female genitalia. It’s just that simple. There’s lots of ways to do that, including condoms both male and female, celibacy, and lots and lots of kinds of non-penis-in-vagina (PIV) sexual acts.

“i had sex on the 8th day of my cycle and the condom burst but there was no ejaculation is there a high chance i could be pregnant?”

This timing depends on you and your cycle, so there’s no hard and fast answer here. Every woman’s cycle is different, and if you don’t believe me join Fertility Friend (it’s free for the basic services) and check out their excellent Chart Gallery. If you’re like me with a longer cycle and later ovulation (day 19 or thereabouts) then there isn’t a high chance of pregnancy from even ejaculatory sex on day 8. If you’re the stereotypical average woman who ovulates on day 14, there’s still little risk, even from ejaculatory sex, since most sperm live no longer than 5 days (and 5 days is only likely if there is fertile cervical mucous). If you ovulate on day 10, however, ejaculatory sex would not be your pregnancy-avoiding friend.

Of course, if there was no ejaculation, then it depends on how likely it is that there was sperm in your partner’s pre-ejaculate. If he hasn’t ejaculated in at least three days, then the chance of there being live and viable sperm in his pre-ejaculate is very slim (not none, but pretty darn low). If he has ejaculated within three days, then there is a greater likelihood of their being viable sperm.

Combine these two factors – your own cycle and your partner’s ejaculatory history – and you get your answer.

None of which answers the question of STDs, just pregnancy. It’s a lot easier to pick up an STD from unintentionally unprotected sex, so if your partner isn’t someone you regularly have sex with, and/or if you are not currently monogamous, testing is a good idea, as well as letting any other current sexual partners know about the situation, before you have unprotected sex with them.

“will my breasts go droopy after an abortion?”

An abortion will not cause your breasts to change.

However, a pregnancy will. Breast changes are one of the earliest signs of pregnancy for many women, including breast growth and increased breast fullness. Pregnancy also causes relaxation of the ligaments that support your breasts – though this is more pronounced later in pregnancy.

When your pregnancy ends those changes will reverse, which can mean feelings of less fullness, smaller breasts and a bit of, yes, breast droopage or sag. Some women will notice changes like these and some women won’t. It’s a very individual thing.

I spent some of my break-time reading this post over on Alas, a Blog, ostensibly on the concept of “Choice for Men” (i.e., the choice of men to decide post-conception not to support children they participate in creating). I’d be more in favour of something like this if they were asking for the ability to officially declare this preference prior to having sex, and back it up with sterilization, and then not pay child support, but hey, that’s me. Regardless, the vitriole and fuzzy logic can be interesting and instructive.

Here’s how choice regarding conception and birth go for men and for women, ‘kay? And I dig that I’m talking about ideal human relationships where neither party is being coherced into sexual activity, people actually think about this stuff instead of just rut like bunnies, and both parties are respectful of each other.

First off there’s the near infinite time period prior to engaging in sexual activity for both parties to decide a) whether or not they want to have sex with someone of the opposite sex, b) what sorts of sex (vaginal vs. non-vaginal to have) and c) what sorts of contraception to utilize. They can also meet each other and talk about these issues together.

Men and Women have equal potential ability (in a relatively perfect world without abusive relationships/etc.) to choose not to be responsible to a child during this time period. Men and Women do have different options for contraception which is caused caused by both biology and politics. However, they do have three options to choose from in common which virtually guarantee a lack of responsibility to possible future children in this time period: not having sex, not having vaginal sex, and being permanently surgically sterilized (tubal ligation and vasectomy).

Then there’s the time period of the sex act itself. Men and Women have different choices that they can make during this time. Women get to choose whether to have vaginal sex, whether to have vaginal sex during what may be a more fertile time for them, whether to have vaginal sex with a fertile man (vs. a provably sterile one), whether to use condoms or a diaphragm or another barrier method, whether to use spermicides, whether to have the male ejaculate in her vagina or not, and so on. Men get to choose whether to have vaginal sex, whether to have vaginal sex with a fertile woman (vs. a probably sterile one), whether to use condoms or another barrier method, whether to use spermicides, whether to ejaculate inside the woman’s vagina, and so on.

Of course, all of these choices have varying degrees of risk for pregnancy, and the people involved in the act choose their own level of risk. Obviously, a man and a woman relying on the withdrawal method alone for contraception have a higher acceptable level of risk than does a couple relying on oral contraception, condoms and withdrawal together. Ostensibly, this means that one couple is demonstrating greater reluctance to support a child.

Post-ejaculation/sex, the man no longer has any options for whether or not he’s willing to create a new life. Sorry, it sucks, but hey, that’s how biology works. Pregnancy is a thing that occurs in a woman’s body. Men don’t get to say what happens in/to women’s bodies.

Post-sex, women have the choice (at least in Canada) to use at least two varieties of morning-after pill, if they feel their precautions weren’t sufficient or broke down at some point in the process.

They can also, should they end up pregnant, choose one of several methods of abortion (if it’s accessible/affordable/safe in their area) should they not wish to carry the pregnancy through to term for any reason. I’m not sure when their legal right to do this ends in all areas, but in North America it’s usually somewhere between three months and just pre-birth.

Yup, this is a choice that women have that men don’t, but then, men don’t get pregnant. This doesn’t mean that in this ideal and respectful situation men can’t talk to women about what choices are and so on. But as one man said, men can only really be pro-support, not pro-choice. This means they can only choose to either support a woman’s decisions either way, or not, because the choice isn’t theirs to make.

This means that women have a longer period of time to make a choice about whether or not to support a possible child. Please note that this longer period of time is really only three to nine months longer. Considering that both parties have the near-infinite period of time prior to having sex in common to make that choice, and that this longer period of time is based in the reality of biology – women get pregnant and men don’t – this isn’t really unfair.

And yes, women can choose to give babies up for adoption post-birth (which requires the father to also give consent for this, if he can be found, usually). Realistically, this doesn’t often happen, just as abortion doesn’t often happen. Most unexpected pregnancies become births and babies, not abortions.

I’m attending a three-day scientific conference on Menstrual Cycle Research out at the University of British Columbia. I’m volunteering, of course, because then I can get in for free. The big topic, of course, is menstrual suppression, but there’s papers and studies being presented on all sorts of related topics, including fertility awareness, menopause, and so on. Lots of interesting stuff. It’s probably the first time I’ve ever been surrounded by a bunch of PhDs who are all experts on a topic I actually know a heck of a lot about, and it’s quite exciting to get to hear a lot of high-level discussion of the issues.

I’ll be writing a couple of posts on my palm as I go along and posting them here when I’m done. Today was the opening day of the conference, and I recognize the structure, so familiar to me now from Kim Stanley Robinson’s descriptions in the Red Mars series (he has a love affair with scientific conferences and writes about them in most of his books). There was an opening plenary and a welcome from a local Musqueam elder, and then some breakout sessions. I chose the menstrual cycle topics one, and of the papers presented today, a couple had some interesting insights. One rather large and over-reported study (two groups gave talks on the same set of research data), was, unfortunately, very poorly designed, so they didn’t really get any useful data. What a waste!

They questioned women on their contraceptive usage and their menstrual product usage, and interestingly they included as the only fertility awareness-type option, the rhythm method! Unbelievable, and many in the audience were quick to point out that “the rhythm method” is an outdated term for a very poor form of natural birth control based on the calendar, quite unrelated to the modern practice of sympto-thermal charting which has an incredible success rate.
Anyway, I’ll post more about the conference soon.